


where two lines meet (the mutual understanding remix)

by mathelode (engmaresh)



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy, Star Wars: Bloodline - Claudia Gray
Genre: F/M, Implied Sexual Content, Politics, Relationship of Convenience, Scheming
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-22
Updated: 2020-10-22
Packaged: 2021-03-08 03:08:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,821
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26738614
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/engmaresh/pseuds/mathelode
Summary: If there's one thing Carise likes about Armitage Hux, it's that he understands the desire to bring one's enemies low.
Relationships: Armitage Hux/Carise Sindian, background Carise Sindian/Leia Organa
Comments: 1
Kudos: 5
Collections: Remix Revival 2020 Madness





	where two lines meet (the mutual understanding remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Carise](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18249206) by [Aurae](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aurae/pseuds/Aurae). 
  * In response to a prompt by [Aurae](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aurae/pseuds/Aurae) in the [remixmadness2020](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/remixmadness2020) collection. 



Stars, he’s skinny, moreso obvious when he’s naked, long-limbed and gangly, deathly pale. It makes his furious flush even redder, almost clashing with his hair, the only points of colour on this strange, strange man.

“Carise-”

“Lady,” she tells him. Kneeling over him. He may be the general of an army, and she nothing more (but soon, no longer _nothing_ ) than a disgraced noblewoman, but here she holds all the power. “Lady Sindian.”

“Of course, my lady,” he murmurs. His hands are cold as he runs them up the backs of her thighs, pushing her skirt up to her waist. Lust has softened the cultured affectation of his accent, rounding out his vowels; it marks him for what he is, backwater child of an Outer Rim planet. Carise, even during her tenure as Senator, never bothered to visit the Donne province of Arkanis. It wouldn’t do to show too much interest in the ruins of Arkanis Academy, and that swampy marshland was good for only two things--herding nerfs and training soldiers.

And Armitage here has been well trained. Clearly he knows how to use his sharp tongue for more than barking orders and trading barbs with Kylo Ren.

“Good,” she murmurs, stroking back his hair, and rocking down against his mouth. The praise, she notes, makes him work even harder.

*

Contrary to popular belief, Carise does more than lounge around being Armitage Hux’s kept woman. A decade in politics isn’t to be wasted doing nothing, especially when she’s found herself so close to the action. Since she exists outside of rank and file, she isn’t privy to the Order’s movements and secrets--still so very underground, still so very cautious of the long, if feeble arm of the New Republic. Yet as much as she’d underestimated Leia Organa--or maybe Leia _Skywalker_ is a more fitting name for Darth Vader’s vindictive daughter--Leia, in turn, has underestimated her. She thinks Carise humiliated. She thinks Carise defeated.

She’s a fool to think Carise would ever be so weak.

Of course playing information broker for Outer Rim cartels and the First Order isn’t exactly what Carise had had in mind for her return to power. Leia’s controversial departure from galactic politics had salted the trail she’d left behind, but not so much that Carise could have fought to have her titles restored. But she has found a way to remain where she needs to be--in the center of the web of wealth and information flowing from the Core to the various First Order outposts. Rinnrivin’s cartel hadn’t died with him; these wretched organisations and their cockroach members never did, and Carise had been well positioned to continue business with them.

Business which has brought her back within the sights of the First Order, and finally solved one mystery for her, namely that of Brendol Hux’s disappearance from Arkanis all those years ago.

She never did get to know the man--an untimely death, by some mysterious illness, but his son continues his legacy. Has improved on it, according to some. Armitage is tight-lipped on what exactly these improvements are (classified, need-to-know, and all that) and for now, Carise is content to let these secrets lie. They’re not ones she's willing to sell anyway.

Her office is her solar yacht, the _Firebird_ ; fast and quiet and to some extent, discreet. At any rate, no one questions its presence on Catonica and no one looks twice when she steps into a casino in Canto Bight.

She spots Armitage right away--it’s that military stick up his ass and that envious beggar’s gleam in his eyes. He hates them, all these people, dripping with jewels and precious metals, gambling their millions away with another trillion to spare. She knows he’d like nothing more than to give the order and have the city blown sky high, but he’s no fool. This is where the Order is being bankrolled. This is where he gets his ships, his weapons, and that tightly buttoned uniform she likes to peel him out of just to see him flush.

He dissembles well enough when he sees her, scowl smoothing out into a smile, shoulders relaxing slightly, but the curl of his lips is never far from a sneer and his eyes remain cold.

“Carise.”

“ _Lady_ Carise,” she reminds him, letting a smirk of her own slip past when his hand tightens on their handshake. That’s about as public as they take their bedroom games: whatever they do should hold up to scrutiny. The First Order, as the Empire was, is a seething, paranoid mess, full of officers ready to stab each other in the back if it means a promotion. And Carise, for all that she has washed her hands of the New Republic, is aware that she remains a citizen. If her alliances are too obvious, there is still a chance that investigation into Tai-Lin Garr’s assassination might be reopened. Leia still has friends in the Senate, and at times she can be as paranoid as the Order she seeks to oppose.

Leia, it always comes back to Leia. They’re in the Corporate Sector today, because Carise has come to learn through her network that certain planetary securities, planets that had signed the New Republic’s Military Disarmament Act, have had agents spotted in the region.

Leia’s new merry band of rebels is stockpiling weaponry. Carise is just here to make an introduction.

Kae Rcher is a short man almost as skinny as Armitage, yet his presence (and the spectre of his power and wealth) fill the room. He’s the brother-in-law of Vanya Arakyd, head of Arakyd Industries, primarily a droid and arms manufacturer. Her father had made his fortune producing probe and interrogation droids for the Galactic Empire. Before that, he’d played both sides in the Clone Wars. Kae has been seen in talks with persons associated with CorSec, and Leia has always had her fingers deep in that organisation.

Carise had let that slip to Armitage, and now Armitage is here to see if the Order can make Arakyd a better offer.

“Don’t try flattering him,” she whispers to Armitage. “He hates it, you’re terrible at it, and he’ll see right through you.” It’s not that Armitage can’t be charming. But he’s a soldier, not a grifter, and the kind of schmoozing and boot-licking First Order officers learn isn’t going to fly here.

“Don’t tell me what to do,” he hisses back, and she watches him straighten his cuffs, the hem of his tunic. Armitage’ll probably be better off if he let her take the reins, but he’d never stoop to that, not for business. He's a neurotic mess, all First Order officers are, but at least he’s made it further than most. Carise hangs back, orders herself a cocktail, and then watches their exchange from the corner of her eye.

Kae flirts. She’d warned Armitage to expect that, and he reacts as well as he can--stiffly suspicious. Kae is of course one of those men that finds that charming, and soon he’s sidled up to Armitage with an arm around his shoulder and a hand on his knee, and Armitage doesn’t _not_ look interested. Carise takes a sip of her drink. She hadn’t thought Kae his type. Too short. Maybe it’s that heady musk of power that makes him seem larger than he is.

If it comes to that, they can work with this. Smarter people than Kae have been taken in by a pretty face, and while Armitage isn’t going to enjoy being the honeypot, Carise already knows he’ll do it if it gets him what he needs.

She chews thoughtfully on her olive. It’s the kind of practicality she can appreciate. It looks like Leia’s been exercising that too. Really, she’s the only person who Carise can think of who’d set aside the fact that it’d been Arakyd droids that had tortured her during her stint as Vader’s prisoner, and try to deal with them instead. Carise is going to enjoy ruining this for her.

*

Later, back in her bed on the _Firebird_ , Armitage rolls onto his side and trails the back of his hand over her bare shoulder. It's awkward, like he's trying to be comforting but doesn't quite know how that works. Carise shrugs his hand off.

“You’re thinking of her.”

“Who?”

“Organa.” Carise blinks. _Kriff_. Too late, she’s given herself away, and Armitage’s lips split into a sly grin as he watches the emotions play across her face.

“What gave it away?”

“Your brow wrinkles. You get this distant look in your eyes.” He rolls away, reaching for the box of cigarras he keeps on her bedside table. He only smokes after sex, like it’s something he’s been told is a done thing. Maybe it was part of his officer training. He offers her the cigarra and for once, she accepts.

“She’s a memorable woman,” Carise says diplomatically.

“And so you keep thinking of her while we fuck.” Armitage doesn’t sound angry; in fact when she turns to him, he’s still grinning, like it’s the funniest joke he’s heard. “I’m flattered, _Lady_ Sindian, but I fail to see the similarities between us.”

Cheeky bastard. His boyish glee has transformed his face, and she’s reminded suddenly of how young he is. Only two years younger than her, though he carries himself like a much older man. She plucks the cigarra from his mouth and brings it to her own lips, exhaling the acrid smoke into his face. She likes him better like this, louche and slightly unkempt. Hux merely shrugs and lights another.

“What will you do with her?” he finally asks, once the cabin is thick with smoke. She’ll have to run the bedding through multiple cycles to get rid of the stench.

“I don’t know,” Carise admits. She thinks of Leia humiliated, at her feet. Maybe she’ll finally break and cry, and Carise will be there, extending her hand and Leia will have no recourse but to accept it. Her mercy, her magnanimity.

There’s still a strange smile playing about Armitage’s lips as he watches her, cold eyes intent. There’s a secret he knows about Leia that she doesn’t. This is why this revelation is amusing to him. Carise is certain of that.

“I know the feeling,” he says, and in that, she can hear his sincerity. She wonders what kind of vengeance he’s still hungering for. Brendol Hux is already dead.

As Carise stubs her cigarra out in her empty snifter, she reflects that it doesn’t matter. Whatever Donne marsh he crawled out of, whatever his father’s program has moulded him into, she can recognise in Armitage glimpses of herself. They’re both creatures of the Arkanisian deep, always hungry, always waiting. Leia has hitched her boat to the New Republic’s sinking ship; soon they will both go down.

And there’s only so long the princess can keep treading water.


End file.
